


All Hallows' Eve

by Dee_Laundry



Series: My Fathers' Son [11]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Halloween, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-31
Updated: 2010-10-31
Packaged: 2017-10-14 03:29:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dee_Laundry/pseuds/Dee_Laundry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“<i>I</i> am fine,” House replies. “<i>I’m</i> not the moron who managed to give himself hyperthermia at the end of October.”</p><p>PPTH Oncology Halloween Party, 2010</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Hallows' Eve

**Author's Note:**

> Jack is 14 months old. Written for the Halloween Challenge. Thanks to for review and Hannah and Mare for encouragement.

The first thing Wilson sees when he comes to is a pair of lifeless, shockingly large bone-white eyes.

“Where’s Jack?” he asks, and if an impending panic twists his voice into an almost shriek-like tone, he doesn’t think anyone will hold it against him.

“Home safe in his crib, with Marjorie watching him. Maybe I should get the peds ward to bring in a crib for you too, you big baby.”

House.

OK, there’s one person who might hold it against him, but Wilson can’t bring himself to care. “How are you?” he asks.

“ _I_ am fine,” House replies, snatching the toddler-sized Elmo costume off Wilson’s chest and dropping it to the floor. “ _I’m_ not the moron who managed to give himself hyperthermia at the end of October.”

Wilson settles himself back in the sheets. The curtain around the bed means it wasn’t severe enough for even House to get him admitted, although his clammy skin provides evidence of rather extensive use of cooling blankets. The hanging bag for the IV is less than a quarter full. He’s fine; no biggie. He opens his mouth to reassure House -- and see if he thinks Wilson’ll be home in time to catch _Frankenstein_ on the AFI Classic Horror Countdown -- but House beats him to the punch.

“What insanity prompted you to _seal_ the ventilation holes in that stupid costume?”

“It needed more padding because it was too skinny,” Wilson defends. “And once I got the shape right, the feathers didn’t cover it entirely. Looked like the thing had mange.”

House leans forward in his seat and reaches out, ostensibly to check the IV port in the back of Wilson‘s hand, but the touch is just a bit too soft and lingering to be purely clinical, and Wilson lets the corners of his mouth drift upward.

Sitting back, House says, “Mites.”

“What?”

“Mites! Dogs have mange; birds have mites.”

Wilson rolls his eyes before shutting them. It’s reasonably quiet here, and Jack’s safe with his nanny, and this has been a long week. Wilson’s going to take some rest where he can find it.

“Anyway,” he says, “as you know, the costume wasn’t my choice. _I_ wanted to be Obi-Wan Kenobi, and have Jack be Luke Skywalker. I had a chew-safe lightsaber picked out for him and everything.”

House grunts. “He’s barely an earth walker, and you wanted him to be a Skywalker.”

That pops Wilson’s eyes open. “Are you sure you’re OK?” He looks House over, searching for any extra pain, any extra fatigue he might not have seen earlier. “That was a really weak pun.”

“Shut up,” House retorts, and props his chin on the handle of his cane. “Been a long afternoon, and you only picked the Star Wars theme to try to scheme me into being Darth Vader.”

Wilson smiles at the memory of House triggering a peal of giggles from their boy with a deeply rendered “Jack, I am your father” before absolutely refusing to even consider wearing the costume. (“Unless it comes with the actual power to choke idiots with my mind. In that case, I’m all in.”)

“Should’ve taken me up on it,” Wilson says. “Would’ve been cooler than what you ended up wearing.”

“That wasn’t me; you can’t prove a thing.”

Wilson’s smile deepens. It _was_ House; Wilson _can_ prove it; but if House wants to pretend the entire hospital doesn’t know exactly who donned the most cumbersome costume of the party just to please a fourteen-month-old, then Wilson is willing to let him.

***  
It was a week before Halloween when House emerged from Jack’s bedroom and asked, “Hey, Wilson, what the hell kind of shows are you letting that kid watch?”

Wilson looked up from the administrative files that were spread over the dining room table. “What?”

“Jack just called me Nuffle Nuts.”

“Called you _what_?”

House took the chair across from Wilson and swiped Wilson’s water glass. “I read him his bedtime story - that Penny in Pigtails Halloween thing you picked out - and then he says to me, ‘Night-night, Nuffle Nuts.’” Half the glass of water was gone in one gulp. “Look, I don't care if the kid curses – I certainly called my dad a name or two – but Nuffle Nuts is pretty lame, don't you think?”

Baffled but with no energy to puzzle the issue through, Wilson turned back to his work. “I have no idea. I'll ask Marjorie tomorrow.”

After a few minutes with the scratch of pen against paper the only sound, House leaned forward. “You don't have much more work to finish, do you? Because I was thinking...”

Wilson kept his head bowed but looked up, a pose he knew was well appreciated. “I don't know, House. If your nuts are all nuffled, I'm not sure I want to get anywhere near –”

“Shut up, you, and get in that bedroom.”

Wilson grinned and left his paperwork for the morning.

At breakfast, he remembered what House had mentioned and looked over at his boy, who was devouring cereal in his high chair. “Jack, honey, yesterday you said a strange word to Daddy. You said, ‘Nuffle nuts.’”

“No,” Jack replied around a mouthful of puffs.

“You callin’ me a liar, boy?” House adopted the tone and steely-eyed squint of a gunslinger in a saloon.

“House. Yes, you did, Jack, remember? After Daddy read the Halloween story, you said ‘Nuffle nuts.’”

“No.”

Coffee half-way to his mouth, House paused. “Short-term memory loss, hm.”

 _Oh, no, not again._ “He's just a toddler!” Wilson insisted. “It's not a symptom, so don't go into diagnostic mode and –”

“No!” Jack interrupted, pointing at House. “Nuffle-nuffle-nus. Daddy.”

“See?” said House, pointing toward Wilson.

“Um,” said Wilson, but declined to complete the pointing circle. There was something familiar about this; if he could just figure it out…

Jack sighed, his expression conveying quite clearly that his parents were the densest people in the word. “How-ween Jack is Elmo. Pop Big Bird. Daddy Nuffle-nuffle-nus.”

Oh! “Snuffleupagus!” Wilson told House. “Jack wants you to be another Sesame Street character named Snuffleupagus for Halloween. He's like, uh, a furry brown elephant.”

“You mean a mastodon?”

“Oh, right, but without the tusks.” It was getting late; he had to finish the dishes now to have the kitchen clean before Jack's nanny arrived. “He's also Big Bird's best friend.”

“Best fend!” Jack cooed happily.

“The one everyone else thinks doesn't really exist?”

“Not everyone,” said Wilson. “Elmo knows Snuffleupagus is real.”

“It does have an interesting kind of parallelism to it,” mused House. “But I’m not doing it.”

Wilson snuck a look at Jack to see if he was following. It wasn’t entirely clear, but Jack did choose that moment to assert himself again. “How-ween Daddy is Nuffle-nuffle-nus.”

“Gotcha, kiddo,” House replied with a click and a pointer finger aimed Jack’s way.

Silently cheering Jack on for winning that King Stubborn round, Wilson turned back to the dishes. A second later, House rose from the table and dumped his mug and plate by the sink. He leaned in close and Wilson paused, anticipating a kiss on the cheek – which might turn into a more interesting kiss if Wilson had anything to say about it. But the expected lip-on-skin action did not come; instead House whispered, “Not doing it,” and fled.

Crap. Wilson checked to make sure Jack was safely occupied in his high chair and then jogged down the hall after House. “What do you mean, you’re not doing it?”

“Let me simplify it for you,” House said. “Oh, no, wait, I can’t, because the simplest form is already: ‘Not doing it.’”

“We need you.”

“You did fine without me last year. Won first prize for best team theme, although I think the male population will agree with me that stacking the judging deck with grandmothers and then carrying around a two-month-old in the most adorable monkey costume ever is a cheat.”

“Oncology wanted to meet him!”

“And you as Man with the Yellow Hat.” House scoffed. “Only you would pick a costume that _requires_ a tie.”

“You’re not distracting me,” Wilson informed him. “You have to come to the party this year. Jack wants Snuffleupagus.”

House shrugged with the most annoying nonchalance possible. “So get him Snuffleupagus. Just not with me inside.” He headed into the bathroom; Wilson followed close behind.

“Not with –”

“Look, it’s a big furry thing, right? Shove a nurse, or one of your interns, or hell, Chase if you want, inside the costume, tell Jack it’s me, and voila, happy kid, happy you, happy me sitting at home not being at a lameass kids’ Halloween party in a lameass costume.”

Wilson couldn’t believe his ears. Well, actually, he could, and that was what made this entire thing so unbearable.

“You won’t do it? That’s your final word?”

“My final word, Big Yellow Bird.” The bathroom door shut in Wilson’s face, and Wilson strode back down the hall to the kitchen.

***

And that had, in fact, been House’s final word on the subject. No amount of prodding, badgering, or attempted bribery had been able to sway him into changing his mind, and Wilson had been utterly disappointed… right up until the moment that Snuffy shuffled into the party with a distinctive list in his gait.

Jack was delighted; the other children at the party were delighted; Wilson was… manfully pleased. (There was only so much his masculinity could take from inside a Big Bird costume.)

The party was a great success for all, with games and candy and a couple bottles of beer disappearing under Snuffy’s trunk. It wasn’t until the final wind-down, when most of the partygoers had gone and Snuffleupagus had shuffled back off, that Wilson started to feel light-headed. He was pulled aside by the “just arriving” House, and moments later whisked away by House’s team, only to wake up in this hospital bed, _sans_ costume – _sans_ clothes of any kind, he realizes suddenly.

“You didn’t even leave me my underwear?” he demands of House.

“Medical emergency,” House says with a shrug. “Now drink up that IV so we can go watch _Frankenstein_. My portable TV doesn’t get that channel.”

It’s one of Wilson’s best Halloweens ever.


End file.
